Archive for June, 2011

I’ve been listening to and reading about the aftermath of the Vancouver riots and I still can’t muster up any sympathy for those outed as suspects in the rampage “by the internet”.

The specific example of Nathan Kotylak is the most interesting at the moment. He appears to have paid the highest cost for his actions so far.

No one should be making threats towards the Kotylak family, no one but the courts can judge his guilt or apply a penalty and I appreciate Nathan’s apology – but I’m still not willing to excuse a teen learning publicly that there a consequences to public violence.

I grant that the violent destruction of [capitalist] property is how some choose to express themselves politically or otherwise. But I’m no fan of violence, and I don’t think it’s a meaningful way to make one’s point.

Black bloc or Canuck bloc individuals engaging in these activities know the consequences of their actions. Their intent not to get caught only mitigates their liability in their own minds; not the victims’, other citizens’ or in the justice system.

People need to learn that committing violence in public and assuming it won’t be made public is like assuming you can swim and not get wet: it’s impossible unless you wear a full body suite!

My presentation this year was titled LMS-Based Teaching Hacks: A Collection of Simple Ideas to Tweak Your Teaching Within an LMS. It was well received and the room was standing room only.

Much as the development community would use the term, these teaching hacks were intended to be pragmatics solutions about using a resource not as it was originally intended to be used.

I shared a collection of simple ideas that can magnify the impact of an instructor’s teaching through the use of an LMS labelling them “Teaching Hacks”. Some of the teaching hacks addressed concerns with student attendance and communications, others with facilitating collaboration and other elements of active learning.

Not only were there a lot of good questions, but I also was given some great feedback that I’ve already incorporated.

I enjoyed main of the other sessions focussing on Sakai’s future with OAE, it’s strong base with CLE.

I was able to engage in some interesting discussions that informed what I’m interested in with Isaak/Sakai at Brock University. The sessions on Turnitin integration with Assignments(2) were useful, and I think the Sakai community is close to addressing a long standing issue with its help files (although not there yet) – I promise to help.

I had called Hover’s toll-free number two weeks before mattclare.ca expired. It sounded like lots of time as we talked through the plan.

I sent my concierge at Hover my passwords and he changed the contact E-Mail at A2WebHosting to his own. The .com address were transferred to Hover very quickly without issue.

CanReg refused to send the transfer E-Mails to my concierge’s E-Mail address, despite appearances from their web interface to suggest everything had been changed. CanReg kept sending E-Mails to my @mattclare.ca address. We both tried, but despite a number of changes in a number of locations the transfer details were always being sent to @mattclare.ca

The transfer was started on a Friday in the early afternoon. My concierge warned me by E-Mail that he was about to start and shortly after the transfer E-Mail showed up. I wasn’t able to check my E-Mail that afternoon until 5:30 that night and even though Hover is open 8:00 to 8:00, they apparently don’t hand-off cases. My E-Mail sat in my concierge’s inbox through the Sunday expiration of my mattclare.ca domain. Read more...(560 words, 2 images, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

About Matt Clare:

Matt Clare is a Canadian Technologist who is focused on building, deploying and refining the best tools possible for teachers and learners in higher education. Advocate of making all web content accessible by making the creation process easy.